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We’ve spent the past month doing a little countdown to our “official” birthday of August 16^th, which was the date the very first cask left the brewery destined for its new home. That beer was Absolution, and the pub was the Three Stags Heads in Wardlow Mires – still a customer of ours to this day (and the only place in the world you can find our Black Lurcher!).

Each day, we’ve focused on each year since our foundation, looking back on not just what was going on here but also the wider context we were working in. We thought it would be nice to keep all that history in one place as a way to reminisce, reflect on our achievements, and think about just how far we’ve come since Gyle #001.

Turns out there’s quite a lot to say when you’ve got thirty years to cover, even when it’s just a snapshot each time – so we recommend settling down with a beer before getting stuck in to reading!

1996 – Patrick Morton founded Abbeydale Brewery, and beers including Moonshine, Absolution and Black Mass first came into being! The Spice Girls hit number 1 for the first time with Wannabe, and Dolly the sheep was born.

1997 saw the first appearance of Last Rites! The first brew of our barley wine took place on February 15^th. Meanwhile, Katrina and the Waves led the UK to their last Eurovision Song Contest win (to date…)

1998 – Absolution won Gold at the Peterborough CAMRA Festival on its first entry there! Jumanji became the first DVD to hit the UK market, the Ford Focus was named Car of the Year and Nigella Lawson’s “How to Eat” cookbook was launched, inspiring a nation of home chefs.

In 1999 the closure of Wards brewery meant we had to go from scrounging yeast (including by Pat’s wife Sue who’d head down with a bucket on a Saturday mornings) to starting our very own house yeast. Our culture is what gives our beers their own unique character and it’s something we spend a lot of time every day taking care of, so this was a really important step in our history. In the wider world, the debut episode of Spongebob Squarepants aired – momentous indeed.

The UK’s wettest year on record, 2000, saw the first release of Simcoe hops, a pioneering flavour for the craft beer revolution! The Nokia 3310 was launched at the turn of the millennium, too.

2001 was the first time we brewed Belfry, hopped with US Cascade – a very popular beer which remains a seasonal special to this day. Shrek won an Oscar!

The introduction of Small Brewers Relief in 2002 changed the face of UK brewing significantly, with the duty reform it brought in designed to allow small independent breweries to compete more fairly with larger breweries and multinationals. The intention was that duty savings could be reinvested into infrastructure and growth – something that we were able to take great advantage of, and which made a big difference to the next few years of business. By reducing one of the barriers to entry to market, it also meant lots more new breweries could open with a more accessible business model, helping to make the industry more vibrant and exciting. (This is very much an “in a nutshell” overview… please let us know in the comments if you’d like to know more about this!)

In 2003 we were really getting a name for our ever changing cask beer releases, something which has continued to this day, with new cask only specials coming out almost every week! Redemption was just one of those this year, whilst Ugg boots were the biggest trend of the year.

2004 was the year of Holy Water! An incredibly popular 6% pale ale, which we have recently brought back as part of our “Legacy Series” showcasing beers from our extensive archives. MySpace became the first social media site to hit one million users.

2005 was a big year for us. Sue joined husband Pat at the helm of the business, building us a completely bespoke brewing and sales management system which no commercially available software would be able to match for decades. And we took ownership of the Rising Sun, just in time for Christmas! This also meant Sooz started working for us, who’d been bar staff at the pub since before we took it over. She’s now our financial controller and longest serving member of staff. Flip phones were all the rage, although we were all still on landlines!

Pat and Sue took a trip to Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, in early 2006, to visit the new brew plant being built (although it wasn’t to arrive for quite some time… watch this space!) Stuart Noble began working with us, and four members of the team including Pat took and passed the GCB (General Certificate in Brewing) with Stuart’s tutoring. Stuart has been a great friend to the brewery ever since, tutoring, training, advising and helping to improve processes and quality. And does anyone remember being lucky enough to get an Xbox 360 for Christmas ths year?!

The smoking ban came into force in 2007 – although the Rising Sun had brought this in earlier! Speaking of the Rising Sun, the very first Sunfest took place this year (see the pic to the left for the original set up!), with Edale Mountain Rescue as our very first charity partners. Daily Bread was launched in 2007 too, in response to customer demand at our very own pub – knocking John Smiths off the bar! And our Company Secretary Dawn became part of the team, bringing much needed method to our madness!

In 2008, Dan (now Co-Managing Director) joined the business, and the first batch of Deception was brewed against the backdrop of the Beijing Olympic Games! It went on to beat some beer called Punk IPA in a local competition…

2009 – Black Mass was named Champion Beer of Yorkshire. Dan recalls this batch being the result of an unusually horrendous brewday, but it seems to have worked out pretty well! A new cave was discovered in the Peak District and gained the name “Absolution” as it was thought to be the same colour as our beer! We FINALLY took delivery of the newly upgraded mashtun and kettle that we first met in Nova Scotia in 2006 – the mashtun is the one still found in our brewhouse today. The installation was overseen by our new Production Manager, John, who joined the business in this year. And whilst nationwide, beer sales were down, a cask revival was underway!

A very proud moment came in 2010, when not only did Deception win Champion Beer of Sheffield at the Steel City Beer Festival, but Pat was awarded a CAMRA Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to Real Ale at the same time! Outside of the beer world, the first iPad was released and Instagram was launched to the public.

We all got down on Fridays in 2011 thanks to Rebecca Black’s catchy tune (there’s your earworm for the week, you’re welcome), and Absolution joined the list of Champion Beer of Yorkshire winners! It was also the first year that we released Duck Baffler, a pale ale brewed exclusively using Citra hops. It’s arguably the most popular of all the Dr Morton’s beers and so remains an annual January special to this day.

2012 was a time of nationwide festivities, witnessing both the London Summer Olympics, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. And there was cause for celebration here at Abbeydale HQ too as not only did Moonshine win the Champion Beer of Yorkshire crown, taking up the mantle from Absolution, but our Board of Directors grew, with Pat and Sue welcoming Dan, John and Dawn to join them in driving the brewery forwards. The hard work and dedication of the board, alongside their willingness to facilitate new ideas alongside supporting and listening to their team, laid the foundations for where we find ourselves today – as the country’s first employee owned brewery, making truly people powered beer.

In 2013, our charity beer was Dam Forgery, supporting the Friends of the Porter Valley and their work in restoring Forge Dam. We felt that as part of our 30^th anniversary celebrations, working again with a charity we have supported previously and building on that relationship would be a really nice way to feed into celebrating our history and the community that surrounds us – hence us selecting Friends of the Porter Valley to partner with in 2026. We also made a beer especially for Tramlines festival, and the very first keg of Abbeydale beer (Ascension) was on the bar at Sunfest! It was very much a one-off special at the time, with a disclaimer in the programme of “no, we are not doing keg!”

…Ah, how times they do change, as in 2014 we actually made a beer for keg, on purpose – one of the perks of having upgraded our brew kit again with some shiny new vessels, which increased our capacity to 240 BBL (just under 70,0000 pints) per week. We also became custodians of city centre pub, The Devonshire Cat – a venue with a fantastic reputation, which we took on as it was celebrating 10 years in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide. Meanwhile, everyone with an iTunes account became the recipient of a free U2 album.

2015 saw the launch of the Seven Deadly Sins, a range of barrel aged Belgian Dubbels, as well as the Signature Series, with all members of the team invited to come up with their very own beer. Although the series itself came to an end a few years later, this ethos is something which has very much remained a part of what we do ever since, with us all able to contribute ideas and bring our beers to life. The Rising Sun also had a refurbishment this year, adding a kitchen and new dining area which have enabled it to flourish into becoming the beautiful, welcoming venue you know and love today!

Heathen was launched in 2016, and we released our first smallpack! Our capacity increased by 25% with the delivery of a new 60 BBL fermentation tank and corresponding conditioning tank. Toby, now Co-MD, joined the business, bringing oodles of new ideas to the fore. And Double Brimstone made an appearance as the swan song for our much loved American Brown Ale Brimstone… watch this space for news on a limited edition comeback as part of our Legacy Series!

Outside of the brewery, 52% of the country voted to leave the European Union – the repercussions of Brexit continue to impact our business to this day.

The craft beer world was truly flourishing in 2017 and us along with it. Just a few of the notable beers we released this year were Four Degrees of Separation (brewed with previous members of Team Abbeydale who at the time were working for Siren, Magic Rock, and Northern Monk), Encantada (our first ever gruit, brewed with the team from Abirradero in Barcelona), Don’t Go Bacon My Heart (following a visit from North Carolina brewers Ass Clown), and the first ever appearance of the mighty Pilgrim – now arguably our most hotly anticipated annual release! Not only this, but we hosted a real life “Piss Up in the Brewery” where hundreds of you came to see what we do, the core range was rebranded to the stylish look you see today, and the Funk Dungeon was born! Finally, we all got very excited about the delivery of our new cask washer.

Sunfest 2018 saw a whopping 24 different Abbeydale beers available, including a number of festival exclusives, as part of our 100+ strong offering! We also hosted Funk Fest, one of the first festivals dedicated to mixed fermentation beers to take place in the UK, in 2018 – with thirty different beers pouring, and lots of Rennies available! We also released Huckster in collaboration with Peddler Market, which remains one of most highly rated beers, and Heathen became our first permanently available gluten free beer.

2019 was the year of lager, and in June we officially released Heresy! This coincided with us taking the step of moving from 330ml cans to 440ml too. And having worked with us on a number of projects, James Murphy became our official in house designer! We had visits from Amor Artis and NoDa Brewing, from South and North Carolina respectively, cementing long-lasting friendships, and we took a trip overseas to Carnivale Brettanomyces in Amsterdam, where we hosted a Funk Dungeon Meet the Brewer complete with Yorkshire Ploughmans food pairings!

We all know the major life event of 2020 and as with the rest of the world, the pandemic meant in this year we pivoted, pivoted and pivoted some more! (Although, being classed as key workers did mean the team had less opportunity to watch Tiger King…) The very fortunately timed arrival of our own canning line was instrumental to our survival as a business, as was the release of SO. MANY. MINIKEGS. We very sadly had to close the Devonshire Cat, and spent much of the year overwhelmed by the support shown for our independent business, bringing brightness to a really tough time.

Although restrictions continued to have a major impact throughout 2021, we couldn’t miss celebrating our 25^th anniversary with a staff party, even if we did have to hold it over Zoom! We released a number of special beers to commemorate a quarter of a century of Abbeydale Brewery, including the first release of Cryo Heathen.

Black Mass was officially labelled a Black IPA in 2022, and it’s since become our most decorated beer, with multiple awards to its name including overall Champion at the SIBA Independent National Bottle & Can Beer Awards 2023, also reaching the finals as category winner every year since, and being named a Champion Beer of Britain finalist in 2026 too! In other awards news, the Funk Dungeon won Branding of the Year at the Brewers Choice Awards, and the Rising Sun was named Pub of the Year! We upgraded our kettle, which as well as being larger than the previous one (in situ since 2009!) is more energy efficient too. And we started exporting, sending beer to Italy, Sweden and Finland!

In 2023 we took part in Collabageddon, a brilliant project organised by Elusive Brewing, which saw us team up with Utopian and Good Chemistry and be part of a nationwide tap takeover! We also took our first steps into the world of alcohol free with the release of Sparkling Hop Water – not beer, but a delicious beer-adjacent soft drink, showing off one of our key ingredients in a whole new way! And back in our hometown, we were named Best Local Brewery at the Exposed Awards.

Big news in 2024 as we became employee owned, with Pat and Sue taking the step of trusting their team with the business they built along with us. We believe we’re the first and still currently only English brewery (and pub, and taproom!) to operate under this model, and it’s a very proud element of our identity. Also in 2024, after many years expanding our range of gluten free beers, we took the step of declaring that all the beers we release were to be GF from this point on, and our brewer Jim won the title of Brewer of the Year at the Brewers Choice Awards.

In 2025 we were the only brewery to make the finals of the BBC Food & Farming Awards, we won the title of Employer of the Year (SIBA Business Awards) and Pat was awarded the Roger Ryman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brewers Choice Awards – all in part as a result of our trailblazing move to employee ownership. And Laura and Christie got to meet Sheffield legend Sean Bean, who declared our Heathen “alright, that”!

And here we are in 2026. Our thirtieth anniversary year, in which we’ve successfully added our first low alcohol beer, Reverence, into our core range… and opened our very own taproom! Abbeydale Beerworks became part of the family in May and we are so excited to continue using this fantastic space to share our values, welcome our community, and, of course, enjoy some tasty pints. And it’s only August! We can’t wait to find out what the rest of this milestone year holds for us all.

Thank you all for your support over the past three full decades. Here’s to the next thirty years!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

Introducing our new centrifuge – a very cool, rather loud, exceedingly shiny (and expensive…) thirst-inducing machine!

Essentially, what this piece of kit does is spins beer round, really, really fast. This speed pushes any denser material in there outwards, separating any “bits” from the liquid, which in the case of beer means removing yeast and chunkier pieces of hop matter. This vastly reduces the potential for sedimentation and minimises less desirable flavours such as hop or yeast bite, ensuring a cleaner flavour profile. Previously, when a beer had finished fermenting, we had to wait for the yeast to drop out, which was reliant on gravity. The centrifuge adds G-Force in line, so what previously took 48-72 hours now happens as we’re moving the beer from tank to tank – meaning we can make more beer!

This is having a significant impact on how we produce our Brewers Emporium beers, providing greater consistency and a cleaner flavour profile from pint to pint, can to can, keg to keg, and batch to batch, which is great for the drinker and also for our Lab Manager Christie to get that all-important data analysis, woooo! Yields have improved, which are not only a benefit to our business as a whole, but is also a step towards us becoming more environmentally friendly too as our water usage is diminished. More beer out = less wastage, and more pints to enjoy!

Whilst quality and consistency is of course something which we have always meticulously focused on throughout our thirty-year history, one element we have previously not had the kit or ability to have full control over has been the level of haze in our more modern style beers. The centrifuge gives us the power to do this, meaning we can ensure all our beers present in the glass exactly as intended.

A key impact the centrifuge has had has been on Heresy, our lager. As well as all the benefits above, being able to run Heresy through the centrifuge means we can achieve a bright, visually enticing, clean and consistent foamy lager, without the use of the finings we had previously needed to rely upon, meaning Heresy is now vegan friendly!

Evolution not revolution, this is Heresy 2.0! It’s the same beer brewed to the same recipe, but with a tweak to our process meaning it’s not just more accessible but tasting better than ever, and it looks fantastic, too! It’s received unanimous positivity from the brew team (Christie describes it as “still Heresy, but like the best pint of Heresy you’ve ever had!”) and judging by the pints on the tables of our little suntrap terrace at the taproom you all seem to really like it too. It will take a little while until our can labels reflect this change, so please get in touch if you would like to check if a particular batch (identifiable by the best before date on the can) is suitable for a vegan diet.

As centrifuging the beer removes the yeast, which cask beer relies on to condition as well as generate the natural carbonation our consumers expect and want, the process outlined above is currently only applicable to our keg and can beers – so real ale fans, don’t fret! The cask beer which forms the very heart and soul of our business is still the living product you all know and love.

Our centrifuge came from and was commissioned by Alfa Laval – so a big thank you is due to Praveen, Mark and Richard (who was part of our brewteam in the early 2010s!) for all their support in commissioning our new best pal.

Consumer feedback is, as always, really important to us – so please do let us know how you’re finding our most recent Brewers Emporium releases… especially Heresy’s glow up!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

Bonus snap of delivery day… precious cargo!

We know we’ve been harping on about our 30^th anniversary all year already (and why not?!) but we’re ramping things up another notch now we’ve now reached August – the month in which we opened back in 1996! In just two weeks we will be celebrating our “official” birthday, and we’re having a Brewery Open Day on Saturday 15th August to mark the occasion. We’ll have a special shop opening from 12-4pm, mini £5 brewery tours at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm including tasters of Moonshine straight from the tank (just drop in to book yourself on, no advance tickets for these), and our team will be on hand to chat about all things Abbeydale! We don’t do drink-in on site, but you’ve got Abbeydale Beerworks just around the corner and The Rising Sun a scenic walk away, who will both be celebrating right along with us and have beers galore available. We might even have cake!

New to our list of cask specials, we’ll have the launch of Dr Morton’s Birthday Extravaganza, a classic Abbeydale 4.1% pale ale that takes the key hops in our top three bestsellers – Willamette from Moonshine, Nelson Sauvin from Deception and Mosaic from Heathen – and seamlessly melds them together with deliciously juicy, zesty results. Both of our venues will have a cask of this on the bar. We’ve also filled up our wooden pin with Black Mass for a limited edition version of our most award winning beer especially for the taproom!

And the celebrations will continue on Sunday 16^th August too as our Funk Dungeon brewer Jim has put together a selection of extremely rare bottles, brought out from the darkness for a final hurrah! Abbeydale Beerworks for a once in a lifetime, snooze-you-lose opportunity to drink the very last drops of six fantastically funky beers from the dungeon archives. **Updated 4th August – all tickets for this event are now SOLD OUT, but keep your eyes peeled for news of what will be on the Funk Dungeon tap for the birthday weekend!**

Later in the month we’ll also be releasing something special for the Moonshine fans – watch this space!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

We’re delighted to be working with the fantastic Friends of the Porter Valley as our charity partners for 2026-27, and it’s time for our exclusive cask only fundraising beer to be released! Go quackers for Golden Duck!

Golden Duck is a 4.1% pale ale, where Chinook and Mosaic hops combine for a flavoursome citrussy character with notes of grapefruit, lemon and dare we say even… mandarin?! (It’s a duck joke). 10p from every pint sold will be donated straight to Friends of the Porter Valley. We’ll be officially launching the beer on Thursday 16th July, simultaneously at our two venues, The Rising Sun and Abbeydale Beerworks Taproom. Handily, part of the Porter Valley itself falls within the two, so if you fancy doing the double you can walk the very ground you’re helping to support in between your pints!

Friends of the Porter Valley work to conserve, protect and restore the ecology, landscape and cultural heritage of the Porter and Mayfield Valleys, for the enjoyment of all and the benefit of future generations. As mentioned above, many of these beautiful green spaces connect the brewery and taproom to our pub, The Rising Sun, so the parks, woodlands and wildlife the Friends of the Porter Valley help to look after are especially meaningful to our team. 

As well as the beer, we will also be working with the Friends of the Porter Valley on other projects and fundraising campaigns throughout the year, including of course the famous Duck Race, which takes part in Endcliffe Park every Easter Monday – so we’ll be able to bookend the year by being involved with both the 2026 and 2027 races!

Long time followers of the brewery may recall that we have worked with FoPV twice in the past, including raising funds for the restoration of Shepherd’s Wheel in 2009, and Forge Dam in 2013. We felt that as part of our 30^th anniversary celebrations, working again with a charity we have supported previously and building on that relationship would be a really nice way to feed into celebrating our history and the community that surrounds us. This year, the funds we raise will go towards the repair of and upgrades to the Forge Dam Playground, which is in need of a little bit of TLC. We hope to contribute towards a replacement for a broken seesaw, and a new climbing frame, as the current one is reaching the end of its life.  This small playground is hugely popular and very heavily used, including by many of our Rising Sun regulars’ families, so it’s in need of continual investment.

Head here to visit the Friends of the Porter Valley website, to find out more about the work they do and how you can support them, including how to make a donation. You can also find them on Facebook here.

Thank you so much, as always, for your continued support of not just our employee owned business but our wider community too – it really does mean the world to us!

Team Abbeydale

On the second Wednesday of every month at 6.30pm, join our Funk Dungeon brewer (and qualified Run Leader) Jim for a fun and inclusive 5 mile (8km) jaunt from our new taproom, Abbeydale Beerworks! Completely free to attend and open to all abilities, ending in the perfect place to enjoy a pint. Sign up to our next run club meet here!

We will run to the pace of the group and nobody will be left behind, but we expect to be back with a pint within an hour. The aim of the run is to be friendly and sociable with no pressure of time – speedier people are welcome to give it some beans should they wish, we just ask that you loop back round to scoop up the rest of the group in keeping with the supportive vibes of the group. So it’s great for beginners to running who are maybe stepping up from a parkrun to a slightly longer distance, and more experienced runners looking for a relaxed community run alike.

There’s space to leave a small bag/ jacket in the taproom (we’ll of course do our best to keep an eye on them but please don’t leave any valuables behind) and all runners will get a discount off their first drink upon our return. We’ll be out come rain or shine, so please come dressed for the weather (this will include hi-viz clothing in the darker months) and with access to some emergency contact details on your person, but other than that all you need to bring along is yourself!

After a super duper response to our runs so far, we now implement a sign up system so we can ensure a manageable group size and be able to keep in touch with you all for bonus runs, away days and possible future merchandise info too (featuring our snazzy new logo – see below, hand drawn by our in house designer James!), Please head here to pop your name down for our next event.

You should be able to find the dates at the link above, and it’s always the second Wednesday of every month, but for ease – here are the dates for our upcoming Abbeydale Brewery Run Club runs for your diary! All runs start at 6.30pm from Abbeydale Beerworks, 298 Abbeydale Road.

Wednesday 12^th August

Wednesday 9^th September *Half Pint Marathon Special* (don’t worry, we won’t be running 13 miles!)

Wednesday 14^th October (hi-viz required from here please!)

Wednesday 11^th November

Wednesday 9^th December *Christmas Lights Run Special*

New from the Funk Dungeon and released in celebration of Sheffield Wine Week, Keeping Pomaces is a fusion of grain and grape, barrel and brett, teamwork and time. 

This beer began life as a heritage saison, brewed using historic Plumage Archer barley and UK grown Olicana hops, aged in our Funk Dungeon in ex-wine French Oak barrels. We then blended this base onto the pomace of beautiful English Pinot Noir grapes, grown organically by Matt Gregory on his vineyard in in the Leicestershire Wolds, handpicked and gently pressed by nomadic winemaker and storyteller Paris Barghchi, and collected immediately after pressing by our Funk Dungeon brewer Jim, on the maiden voyage of our Kangoo minivan! 

The result is a true expression of English terroir, with each ingredient given space to flourish by the varied producers involved in bringing this to your glass, all sharing an ethos of low intervention, natural yeast and the utmost care and respect. Expect an elegant acidity with flavours of tart, crunchy apple and sharp raspberry sherbet, combined with jammy redcurrant and plum. Earthy undertones of rich oaky tannins and subtle herbal notes from the hops bring balance, before a lick of sweet vanilla ensures a clean and rounded overall finish. 

Simultaneously complex and delicate, Keeping Pomaces is an adventurous beer that feels comfortable in the liminal space where wild fermentation and wine become friends. Unfined and unfiltered with a natural haze, 5.9%, vegan friendly and as with all of our beers, gluten free. Available now in keg and 750ml bottle (including from our online shop). Delicious to sip on its own, or pair with a creamy cheese, a summery salad or a berry coulis topped panna cotta.

Cheers!

Continuing our series where we get to know a little more about the people who make up Team Abbeydale, say hello to our Retail Manager, Lucienne! Lucienne joined the team in November 2025, but it feels like she’s been part of the family for much longer, as a familiar face within our local beer scene and one of the key people involved in making Deception a Sheffield household name in her past role as GM at Shakespeare’s. After 15 years working in pubs, a leap into breweries naturally occurred and we feel very lucky that her path has led directly to our roller shutter doors. Over to Luce!

First up, the basics! What’s your name and where do you come from?

My name is Lucienne, weirdly I still say I’m from Belper, even though I’ve lived in Sheffield on and off for 15 years.

What is your role at Abbeydale Brewery?

I’m the retail manager – it’s a multi-layered role, which means I can get involved in many different areas of the business, but my main responsibilities are looking after our on site shop and brewery website, sending beer to our lovely customers around the country!

What’s your favourite beer/beer style and why?

Right, I’ve got a few answers here. My “desert island” beers are Abbeydale Deception and Redwillow Weightless, so easy-drinking session pales are something I look out for.

The beer that most sticks in my mind is from Nevel – Pine Cones and Cemeteries, a barrel aged wild ale. I put it on the bar at Shakespeare’s and my whole life changed.

I really, really love Mild.

And finally a special shout out to surprise pints of Saison Dupont on holiday. I love walking into a bar that looks rubbish from the outside and finding treasure. 

What’s your favourite thing about working at Abbeydale Brewery?

Honestly, I like everything! But particularly the crew and the really lovely work environment.

Favourite pub to enjoy a pint?

Oooh. Let me think! I’m going to be predictable actually and say my two favourite pubs are two that I’ve worked in – Shakespeare’s, and the Exeter Arms in Derby. I’m generally a big fan of pubs with character and these have that in abundance.

Shout out my local The Notty House as well, and in Derby I also love the Alex and the Smithfield.

Where did you have your first (legal!) pint?

It was the Queen’s Head in Belper, and it was a pint of Bass!

Favourite snack to enjoy alongside a beer?

It’s got to be Scampi Fries really, hasn’t it. I don’t even have a “ooo maybe this” option, it’s just Scampi Fries.

When you’re not being of charge of our shop, what do you like to do?

Walking in Derbyshire, exploring other cities, and travelling around Europe as much as I can. It’s apparently no secret that I’m also quite partial to gawping at trains, cranes and other such heavy industry!

Who’s your hero?

My mum and dad. I couldn’t have had better role models.

And finally… If you were a cartoon character, who would it be?

OK I’ve been thinking about this one and I really wanted to be a big kickass kinda cartoon character, but I think I’m a little Moomin.

—

If you would like to come and say hello to Lucienne in person, you can usually find her in our on site shop, every weekday 9am-5pm!

Cheers!

There’s a new big DIPA in town! Introducing JUGGERNAUT, the latest addition to our Brewers’ Emporium range. 8.0% and boldly hop forward, using Citra, Centennial and Mosaic Lupocore. The hops are layered over a clean flavour profile which allows all those gorgeously vivid tropical notes to shine. Full bodied and showcasing true to style flavours and aromas, with a hefty, juicy character, rounded notes of sweet peach and a bitterness in the finish that invites you straight back for another sip. 

The beer overall was dreamed up by our Production Director John, inspired by his trip to the Yakima hop harvest last summer and the DIPAs he tried on his travels, which you can read more about here.

This is the first time we’ve used Lupocore, which is a hop product newly released in the UK. It’s all natural, scientifically engineered, enhanced hop flavour, intended to provide a bold sensory boost! Lupocore is similar in appearance to a T90 hop pellet, but softer and crumblier. This means it can disperse more quickly, thus providing a greater surface area, increasing flavour transfer and getting more out of the hops. It also has better sedimentation qualities, leading to an improved yield and efficiency – maybe not the sexiest way to promote a hop product to the end drinker, but here at the brewery it’s really important for us to get the most from our kit and do so as sustainably as we can, minimising waste and having greater control over our output.

We’ve also used Carapils from traditional maltsters Weyermann to add a little body whilst keeping the malt base clean. This allows the hop profile to shine most brightly, maximising the potential of the Lupocore. It’s our first time using Carapils too, which has been added in place of wheat for body and head retention, so it’s fair to say Juggernaut really is an innovative beer for us! 

Vegan friendly and as with all our beers gluten free, Juggernaut is available now in cask, keg and can – including from our online and onsite shop. Head to Abbeydale Beerworks, our gorgeous new taproom, for the first pour on cask this weekend!

Cheers!

It all began in 2014. We’ve always been (and remain to this day) a cask focused brewery, but our ethos is to ensure we never stand still, and the times they were a’changing, with fizzy beer becoming something we couldn’t – and didn’t want to – ignore.

Keen to crack on, we invested in our first pressurised vessels and a new washer/filler and set about creating a series of one-off beers designed for keg – imaginatively named ‘Pale Ale #1’, ‘Pale Ale #2, and so on.  Our favourite recipe was ‘Pale Ale #6’, which was later renamed Mosaic, after the hop it was brewed with. The initial artwork for Mosaic was originally intended to be a stop gap and the long-term plan had always been to rebrand and rename the beer to bring it into our range of permanently available brews. So, we set about the task of coming up with a new name for this wonderful beer. We wanted something that was worthy of shouting about – something that recognised our past and fitted in with our existing core beers, but that could also help to drive the image of the brewery forward in this excitingly fast paced and ever-changing industry. 

And so it was that back in 2016, we enlisted the talents of an artist called James Murphy, who was asked to create a contemporary design for this new release. One of three ideas he came up with was the now well-known ‘praying hands’ design we have come to love, with the name coming with it… the crossed fingers were felt to be very befitting of a beer named Heathen! Here, too, the ubiquitous rays were introduced – with a bright red alongside a complementary amber to represent the beer colour. On 23^rd May 2016, the first kegs of Heathen went on sale… and would you believe that the very first place in Sheffield to have it on tap was none other than Turners – valued customers for many years, and as of this month the venue which has become our very own brewery taproom! Serendipity or what?!

Ten years down the line, Heathen is now our third biggest seller, behind only Moonshine and (rather more closely) Deception. It was effectively the kickstarter for our now very popular Brewers Emporium range, from which new beers emerge almost weekly, and James now works for us full time as our in house designer, creating all of the artistic output across our many varied series’ of beers. We’ve seen a number of fresh interpretations on our American Pale Ale – Cryo Heathen, Fresh Hop Heathen, and UK Hop Heathen to name just three – and it is a beer we’re as proud of today as we were a decade ago.

Happy birthday, Heathen! We hope you will join us in enjoying a pint, or can, this Bank Holiday weekend.

Cheers!

In celebration of 30 years of Abbeydale Brewery, we’ve brought back – for a limited time only – one of the absolute OGs of our range. Say a fond hello again to Matins!

Matins originally came about as a consequence of brewery founder Pat Morton deciding to “brew a beer from muesli”, deeming it suitable for the sort of liquid breakfast that ought to find its way onto the set of Red Dwarf or Men Behaving Badly (this was the 90s after all – 27^th August 1996 to be precise, only the 8^th brew to ever be put through the original Abbeydale Brewery kit). The inventive grist, which originally comprised flaked oats, flaked rice and something recorded only as “cereal base” long since gave way to pure Maris Otter pale malt, but the aim of a low ABV, deliciously sessionable and easily quaffable beer remained the same.

Pat recalls visiting Lembas, a specialist vegetarian and vegan wholefoods wholesaler located just around the corner from the brewery (which is also like ourselves 100% employee owned), to purchase the 20kg sacks of muesli base. They were quite bemused that someone was ordering such large quantities, especially when they heard its intended purpose was to go in a beer! Pat once started to explain the canonical hours which inspired the name of Matins to Matt from Lembas, who quickly silenced his explanation – his father was a vicar!

Matins was a regular beer for just over a decade, and Pat was very proud of the body and flavour he achieved in a low gravity, pale beer. But sadly in 2008 it had to be dropped as a regular beer and since then has only appeared rarely as a special. “So make the most of it!”, says Pat.

With all this history dating back to our very beginnings as a brewery, we felt it was only fitting that Matins made a reappearance as part of our “Legacy Series”, helping us to celebrate our 30^th anniversary. The original design for Matins was the first pumpclip which featured the ruined abbey motif that became synonymous with our brand and ultimately so much so that it formed our logo! For the 30^th birthday comeback, the artwork has been reimagined in keeping with our traditional core range, reflecting the importance this beer has held in our history.

Matins is a 3.6% pale ale hopped with Mount Hood – an American variety that’s originally bred from the noble German variety Hallertau Mittelfrüher, so its delicate spicy notes and mild, clean character make it perfect for the easy drinking yet flavourful style we were aiming for. It’s also the sister hop to Liberty, which is unfortunately no longer available but was the hop we used in the first batches of this beer in the 90s. The resulting beer is crisp, fresh and well-balanced with a pleasantly herbal, grassy aroma. Like all our beers, it’s gluten free.

Matins is available now while stocks last in cask to trade customers, and is coming soon to can – watch this space!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale